Serving trays are well known in the art and are generally used by service personnel such as, for examples, waiters and waitresses in restaurants, bars and night clubs, for carrying a plurality of relatively light table items such as glasses, food plates, utensils and the likes.
A problem often arises when using these serving trays of the prior art which typically occurs, for example, in a crowded restaurant where a waiter handling an empty serving tray is called by a customer sitting at a dining table who is asking to pay the bill.
The waiter arrives at the table and, in order to handle the check pad, bill, money, and/or the remote credit card terminal, tries to find a proper place nearby to temporarily support the serving tray and, thus, free both hands for executing these manual operations.
In such crowded restaurants where free space anywhere nearby can be scarce, including on the table of the calling client, the service personnel more often than not has to settle for the only option available, which is temporarily holding the service tray clutched under an arm pit or between the legs, or lying on the corner of a step of a staircase, a stage floor, or the likes.
These various ways of temporarily holding or supporting a serving tray can raise serious safety and hygienic concerns. For example, laying the serving tray on a staircase step or stage floor may cause serious injuries to service personnel, clients and artists alike. Hygienic concerns are particularly raised during hot and humid summer days on exterior terraces and in not so well ventilated restaurants and bars, where the service personnel often wears short sleeve shirts and short pants such that surface portions of the serving trays are in direct contact with sweaty skin.
There is a multitude of prior art serving trays that can generally fulfill the main objective of allowing a single person to conveniently carry a plurality of relatively light items. However, these serving trays are also inefficient in solving the safety and hygienic concerns mentioned hereinabove since they generally do not offer a means for temporarily holding the serving tray when empty.
Against this background, there exists a need for an improved serving tray. An object of the present invention is to provide such a serving tray.